Soccer Football - Scottish Premiership - Celtic v Livingston - Celtic Park, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain - December 21, 2022 Celtic's Kyogo Furuhashi celebrates scoring their second goal REUTERS/Russell Cheyne
If you’ve heard the commentary of yesterday’s game on Sky then you have been subjected to Andy Walker at his worst. As bad as he is, he is not the worst of the lot. He’s merely on the sliding scale of bad.
There are others who are virtually howling at the moon.
Amidst all of this is the same sort of denial I wrote about yesterday in my Fear And Loathing piece, the flat refusal to accept – or perhaps even to acknowledge – that there is a real world out there.
A lot of the coverage is about how close we were run, and a lot of “what ifs?” about the “goal” from Morelos in the first half.
But we haven’t been beaten in the league since St Mirren did us earlier in the season. We haven’t been beaten at home in God knows how long. When we took the lead we deserved to. When we went back in front it was always likely. At 3-1 up we could have written our own ending and our own score-line had we not given away a soft goal.
The Mooch has come up against us three times and he has lost twice and drawn once. As Dylan said, “it doesn’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
A record like that can only lead you to one conclusion. If they want to kid themselves on that the gap has closed that’s their own lookout. Even if it has, it doesn’t help them when we’re still ahead.
The media is in the business of helping sell season tickets over there now, and to do that they need to paint a picture of a club going in the right direction. But this is a team which still has McGregor, Goldson, Jack, Tavernier, Kent and Morelos in it and those guys have been there longer than just about anyone at Celtic Park save McGregor and Forrest.
Morelos was given the nod yesterday and huffed and puffed. Which tells you how highly rated Sakala and Colak are by the manager. Their big-game players produced exactly what? A Tavernier free kick got them back into the game and he scored that second due to poor marking on our part, and another dead ball delivery.
Ange himself pointed that out; their only real threats were from set pieces. This isn’t a team which an on-form Celtic team has to be concerned with. We weren’t at our best yesterday but we were still far from being under any real pressure. They had a little spell, but Hearts put us under greater strain at Tynecastle earlier in the season.
The press has been talking this crap about the gap for ages now. It’s such a cliché that they don’t even bother to wonder any longer if it has any utility at all. Just because we didn’t win by a comfortable margin they’ve “closed the gap”? Yeah?
On 28 December we went to Easter Road and beat Hibs 4-0. When they came to Celtic Park recently they were much better, and lost 4-1. Does that mean they’ve “closed the gap” and if so why don’t their fans take any comfort from that?
The league table shows the gap. It’s 12 points. That’s more than it was when The Mooch took over. He could have cut that gap to a mere three points if he’d been on his game and if his team were as good as the says they are.
They might have a trophy in the cabinet already. But we’ve increased our lead and won the first domestic trophy.
But the media will cling to that “improvement” from Hampden, setting themselves up for another fall and another disappointment. We know it because we’ve seen it.
They have too, but somehow the lesson just isn’t getting through to them.
And that’s with their no penalties awarded against them record tae !!!!!!!!
I agree James. I wish to point out about yesterday and the magnificant show of support from children, women and men of all ages. What a display from all that attended. Before the game started it did your heart good to listen and watch the supporters sing with love and and passion. Not another ground and club brings so mush love to the players. I watched before the magnicant Kyogo came off and just before a corner when he turned to the crowd to rise once again the atmosphere he was loving it and so were 60 thousand supporters in the ground and the ever increasing millions world wide. We have something very special now at Celtic.
‘Walk on’ at the start of the game was magnificent, one of the best ever.
O’Riley gifted them a foul on the edge of the box, what was he thinking, we all know how good Tavernier is from that distance? O’Riley on recent form shouldn’t even have been in the starting line up.
They have two weeks now to worry about the semi-final and how they are going to overcome us, it will be two weeks of more media gobshite, but also two weeks for them to self doubt themselves and feed their already well stoked paranoia. By the time the semi comes they will be nervous wrecks against a much better Celtic team than the one that showed up yesterday, even the normally dependable CCV was very shaky. The Treble is within touching distance and we are totally geared up for it.
only asking did we win against the klan or did v.a.r. do us a favour
Oh, and I think it is absolutely hilarious that they are trying to convince themselves that the gap between the two team is negligible, the gap that we have just increased to 12 points.
Fkn brilliant! 🙂
Couldn’t believe how slow we started, it was as if the Celtic players thought that the Ibrox mob would sit back and let us have comfortable possession like most Scottish teams do when they come to Celtic Park. With O’Reilly and Mooy off the the pace we struggled,
and lost the midfield battle for large parts of the game. This in turn put pressure on our back four and starved our wide men and striker of any service.
Beale’s tactics were spot on with the high press and his players carried it out well. We are by far the classier team but yesterday showed that a slight drop in performance when playing against the 2nd best team in Scotland isn’t good enough. Sometimes you can’t just rely on your class to pull you through,
I’m pretty sure we’ll see a different Celtic performance at Hampden in three weeks time, This team have done us proud over the past two seasons and they deserve to be treble winners.
Winning while not at our best is a sign of a good team. Think we need legs in the midfield, to slow and ponderous yesterday.
I would go ioawata , hatate and McGregor for the Scottish cup semifinal .
Really like haksabanovic as an attacking player, defensively he was terrible for the time he was on the pitch yesterday .
Would like to see young vata given a run in some league games when in control now.
Kyogo off. Bernabei on but off. OH passes to Bernabei. McGregor to beat. Crosses to no one.
Bad lapse by support. Not to worry. Good to hear that supporters at the ground enjoyed the game.
Ian Crocker of Sky needs to drop the “Old Firm” shite. The team that play out of Ibrox is a tribute act. There is no 55. There is no 150 years of history. There is no “Old Firm”. Cro mer works for a huge broadcaster serving a global audience. He needs to stop lying to them repeatedly.
Totally agree Jack, our fans were absolutely brilliant yesterday when the imaginary 55 where taking throw ins or corners there was no objects thrown at them will this happen when we go to their shit hole.
They were at their best we at our worst and they still cannot do the job.
Walk on,
Not ,mind the gap. More, mind the dust ,that obscures us as we disappear over the horizon. That’s why they cannot see the reality of the situation they are in. Either that or there is truth in the old saying; There are none so blind as those who will not see.
They only think it was close because we missed a sitter at 3-1 then they scored against the run of play. Had we gone 4-1 up we’d have gotten a 5th.
Morelos goal correctly chopped off. Clear as day, not sure why it’s getting such nonsense coverage.